Hollywood star Russell Crowe is convinced his infant son will grow up to be an actor, after the three-year-old brought a recent press junket to a halt by telling jokes and performing magic tricks.

Crowe was promoting American Gangster with co-star Denzel Washington when young Charlie decided to commandeer the microphone.

And the Australian tough guy found himself unable to stop his mini-me from taking centre stage.

He says, "I was doing a press conference... and I had Charlie with me. He wanted to come in with me to... the radio press conference, so I thought, 'That'll be all right. I'll just bring him in there, and sit him on my knee.'

"There's four microphones in there, two facing Denzel and two facing me. I've got Charlie on my lap and the very first thing he does is lean over and twist one of the microphones over to him. So I twisted it back and he gave me a look like, 'Buddy!' So he twists it back and I said, 'Look, we've talked about this.

You can't be noisy and stuff, it's an interview.'

"He says, 'Daddy, I would like to tell a joke.' And then he proceeded, in front of these 30 journalists, to tell his favorite joke at the moment, which

is: 'How do you stop a baby from crawling? You pull off its arms and legs.'

"He went through a couple more jokes and stuff and I said, 'We've actually got to get on with the interview, so why don't you just sit there quietly.' And he's a very honest kid and he said, 'Dad, I would rather do my tricks and make lots of noise.' (I said), 'OK, You go in the corridor for a minute then.'"

powered by FreeFind